Even if it was just a few meters, crawling to the booth hurt terribly. Even though her dolphin skin was tougher, it was definitely not accustomed to the friction tarmac can generate. Managing to lift her body high enough to reach for the phone, Sharon called Jim. Despite all the trouble she had had with him, she needed somebody to pick her up -- somebody who already knew her. "Jim?" "Honey! What's the problem? It's 3 AM and-" "Jim, I'm in trouble. I need you to pick me up ASAP!" "Is this an emergency?" "Yes! Please, hurry!" Sharon was about to give Jim her approximate whereabouts, when he unexpectedly hung the phone. Frantically, she called him again but to no avail. What a forgetful idiot, she thought. Why had he to be always like that? always forgetting the important details? She tried again. The phone appeared as busy. Waht the hell? Could Jim have been involved? About a dozen questions later, she noticed that her tail was beginning to dry. At first it was just a very uncomfortable itch, but she realized she was going to have severe problem unless she got wet again, and soon. Since probably Jim was involved too, who could have been? Calling 911 was out of the question, they'd have dismissed it as a joke. Her parents maybe? Suddenly a pair of beams illuminated the street and the phone booth. Following her instinct, Sharon leaped out of the booth and tried to roll out of sight. The beams were too high for a car or a truck, either, and were moving too awkwardly for that. Sharon was still trying to roll away when the lights stopped. The vehicle was now near enough for her to identify it. It looked like a huge, headless figure which moved about on steel legs. The noises it made pointed to two big diesel engines mounted beneath the machine's shoulderblades. The grotesque hunchback-mechanoid also looked like it had been built or repaired in a hurry. "Conrad Volkov, Uchronic Nerd Alliance! Is your name Sharon?" a male voice called from the mechanoid, amplified by a very low-quality megaphone. "Yes! Come here and pick me up!" Sharon replied. So Jim could still be trusted after all! The mechanoid moved to her location just next to the road and Sharon could see a figure controlling it from a post located on top of the thing's thorax. An armoured cover which would have made up the mechanoid's head was visibly missing, having probably been torn apart. The driver -- an unremarkable 18-years-old boy with motor oil all over him -- didn't seem surprised to see a mermaid and operated the mechanoid's hydraulic arms to gently pick her up. "Get into the gunner's post!" the driver said. Sharon slid from the robotic arms into a cache between the two diesel engines; her long tail made fitting in the gunner's post a little tight but she managed to curl up the fins. An old-fashioned Maxim gun was before her, aimed right at the road. The driver made sure that Sharon was into position and revved the engines again. Industrial pumps began to pressure the oil which moved the machine's legs. "Now just WHO THE HECK ARE YOU?" they asked simultaneously. Sharon told her story to the driver from the beginning, as the machine kept pounding the highway. "Your turn now" she concluded. "Wow, I've been in this chron a couple of times but never guessed you had the technology for this kind of meatwork! Well, anyway. The UNA is made up of the most skilled nerds of all the alternate histories of Earth -- those we could reach, anyway. Admission is simple: one has to discover the existence of alternate histories. There are many forces playing the big board game -- on all the alts -- and we're just trying to help each other and ensure the survival of nerdkind. I was just the closest member around." "Jim is across town and you're from... where?" "Clovis, New Mexico, Christian States of America." "Why were YOU nearer than HIM anyway?" "Well, I was the nearest with the resources to get into the complex. Nice Militian, don't you think?" he asked patting the mechanoid's controls. "Where did you get it?" "Yet another chron. Post-holocaust, you know. Damn Cuban missile crisis. Jim was on the team who helped restore it." "Why didn't he ever tell me anything?" "Just for your protection. As I said, there are other forces in--"
Fri Jun 11 17:10:38 1999
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